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Ukraine city Lviv joins Beijing, Oslo, Krakow and Almaty in bdding for the 2022 Winter Olympics

Sat Mar 15 12:08:34 EST 2014

Five cities have submitted formal bids to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, including Lviv in crisis-hit Ukraine, the International Olympic Committee said on Saturday (AEDT).

Lviv, along with Beijing, Oslo, Krakow in Poland and Almaty in Kazakhstan all filed their applications ahead of the midnight deadline.

Stockholm, which had also said it wanted to host the Games, withdrew from the race in January after the bid was vetoed by municipal officials worried about the burden hosting the event would have on taxpayers.

After studying the bid files, the IOC's executive committee is set to pick the finalist cities at a meeting on July 7-9 at the committee headquarters in Lausanne, on the shores of Lake Geneva.

Their picks will then have several months to flesh out their projects before handing in a complete candidature files by January 2015.

The host city will be elected at the 127th International Olympic Committee's (IOC) session in Kuala Lumpur on July 31, 2015.